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Software Project Monitoring and Control

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Software Project Monitoring and Control Module 12 Software Project Monitoring and Control Version 2 CSE IIT, Kharagpur Lesson 31 Risk Management and Software Configuration Management Version 2 CSE IIT, Kharagpur Specific Instructional Objectives At the end of this lesson the student would be able to: • Identify the main categories of risks which can affect a software project. • Explain how to assess a project risk. • Identify the main strategies to plan for risk containment. • Explain what risk leverage is. • Explain how to handle the risk of schedule slippage. • Explain what is meant by configuration of a software product. • Differentiate among release, version and revision of a software product. • Explain the necessity of software configuration management. • Identify the principal activities of software configuration management. • Identify the activities carried out during configuration identification. • Identify the activities carried out during configuration control. • Identify the popular configuration management tools. Risk management A software project can be affected by a large variety of risks. In order to be able to systematically identify the important risks which might affect a software project, it is necessary to categorize risks into different classes. The project manager can then examine which risks from each class are relevant to the project. There are three main categories of risks which can affect a software project: Project risks. Project risks concern varies forms of budgetary, schedule, personnel, resource, and customer-related problems. An important project risk is schedule slippage. Since, software is intangible, it is very difficult to monitor and control a software project. It is very difficult to control something which cannot be seen. For any manufacturing project, such as manufacturing of cars, the project manager can see the product taking shape. He can for instance, see that the engine is fitted, after that the doors are fitted, the car is getting painted, etc. Thus he can easily assess the progress of the work and control it. The invisibility of the product being developed is an important reason why many software projects suffer from the risk of schedule slippage. Technical risks. Technical risks concern potential design, implementation, interfacing, testing, and maintenance problems. Technical risks also include ambiguous specification, incomplete specification, changing specification, technical uncertainty, and technical obsolescence. Most technical risks occur due to the development team’s insufficient knowledge about the project. Business risks. This type of risks include risks of building an excellent product that no one wants, losing budgetary or personnel commitments, etc. Version 2 CSE IIT, Kharagpur Risk assessment The objective of risk assessment is to rank the risks in terms of their damage causing potential. For risk assessment, first each risk should be rated in two ways: • The likelihood of a risk coming true (denoted as r). • The consequence of the problems associated with that risk (denoted as s). Based on these two factors, the priority of each risk can be computed: p = r * s Where, p is the priority with which the risk must be handled, r is the probability of the risk becoming true, and s is the severity of damage caused due to the risk becoming true. If all identified risks are prioritized, then the most likely and damaging risks can be handled first and more comprehensive risk abatement procedures can be designed for these risks. Risk containment After all the identified risks of a project are assessed, plans must be made to contain the most damaging and the most likely risks. Different risks require different containment procedures. In fact, most risks require ingenuity on the part of the project manager in tackling the risk. There are three main strategies to plan for risk containment: Avoid the risk: This may take several forms such as discussing with the customer to change the requirements to reduce the scope of the work, giving incentives to the engineers to avoid the risk of manpower turnover, etc. Transfer the risk: This strategy involves getting the risky component developed by a third party, buying insurance cover, etc. Risk reduction: This involves planning ways to contain the damage due to a risk. For example, if there is risk that some key personnel might leave, new recruitment may be planned. Risk leverage To choose between the different strategies of handling a risk, the project manager must consider the cost of handling the risk and the corresponding reduction of risk. For this the risk leverage of the different risks can be computed. Version 2 CSE IIT, Kharagpur Risk leverage is the difference in risk exposure divided by the cost of reducing the risk. More formally, risk leverage = (risk exposure before reduction – risk exposure after reduction) / (cost of reduction) Risk related to schedule slippage Even though there are three broad ways to handle any risk, but still risk handling requires a lot of ingenuity on the part of a project manager. As an example, it can be considered the options available to contain an important type of risk that occurs in many software projects – that of schedule slippage. Risks relating to schedule slippage arise primarily due to the intangible nature of software. Therefore, these can be dealt with by increasing the visibility of the software product. Visibility of a software product can be increased by producing relevant documents during the development process wherever meaningful and getting these documents reviewed by an appropriate team. Milestones should be placed at regular intervals through a software engineering process to provide a manager with regular indication of progress. Completion of a phase of the development process before followed need not be the only milestones. Every phase can be broken down to reasonable-sized tasks and milestones can be scheduled for these tasks too. A milestone is reached, once documentation produced as part of a software engineering task is produced and gets successfully reviewed. Milestones need not be placed for every activity. An approximate rule of thumb is to set a milestone every 10 to 15 days. Software configuration management The results (also called as the deliverables) of a large software development effort typically consist of a large number of objects, e.g. source code, design document, SRS document, test document, user’s manual, etc. These objects are usually referred to and modified by a number of software engineers through out the life cycle of the software. The state of all these objects at any point of time is called the configuration of the software product. The state of each deliverable object changes as development progresses and also as bugs are detected and fixed. Release vs. Version vs. Revision A new version of a software is created when there is a significant change in functionality, technology, or the hardware it runs on, etc. On the other hand a new revision of a software refers to minor bug fix in that software. A new release is created if there is only a bug fix, minor enhancements to the functionality, usability, etc. Version 2 CSE IIT, Kharagpur For example, one version of a mathematical computation package might run on Unix-based machines, another on Microsoft Windows and so on. As a software is released and used by the customer, errors are discovered that need correction. Enhancements to the functionalities of the software may also be needed. A new release of software is an improved system intended to replace an old one. Often systems are described as version m, release n; or simple m.n. Formally, a history relation is version of can be defined between objects. This relation can be split into two sub relations is revision of and is variant of. Necessity of software configuration management There are several reasons for putting an object under configuration management. But, possibly the most important reason for configuration management is to control the access to the different deliverable objects. Unless strict discipline is enforced regarding updation and storage of different objects, several problems appear. The following are some of the important problems that appear if configuration management is not used. Inconsistency problem when the objects are replicated. A scenario can be considered where every software engineer has a personal copy of an object (e.g. source code). As each engineer makes changes to his local copy, he is expected to intimate them to other engineers, so that the changes in interfaces are uniformly changed across all modules. However, many times an engineer makes changes to the interfaces in his local copies and forgets to intimate other teammates about the changes. This makes the different copies of the object inconsistent. Finally, when the product is integrated, it does not work. Therefore, when several team members work on developing an object, it is necessary for them to work on a single copy of the object, otherwise inconsistency may arise. Problems associated with concurrent access. Suppose there is a single copy of a problem module, and several engineers are working on it. Two engineers may simultaneously carry out changes to different portions of the same module, and while saving overwrite each other. Though the problem associated with concurrent access to program code has been explained, similar problems occur for any other deliverable object. Providing a stable development environment. When a project is underway, the team members need a stable environment to make progress. Suppose somebody is trying to integrate module A, with the modules B and C, he cannot make progress if developer of module C keeps changing C; this can be especially frustrating if a change to module C forces him to recompile A. When an effective configuration management is in place, the manager freezes the objects to form a base line. When anyone needs any of the objects under configuration control, he is provided with a copy of the base line item.
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